CSBG Archive

You Decide ’09 – Who is the Smartest Person in the Marvel Universe?

You know the bit – each day in October I’ll give you folks a poll question. Each poll will last four days. The results will be posted every Tuesday leading up to (and ending with) Election Day on the first Tuesday in November. Here is the master list of all questions asked so far!

76 Comments

David

Reed’s got this one in the bag, if you define smartest by highest IQ. However, Tony definately outclasses him in interpersonal skills, and Victor’s breadth of experience puts him in the zone. While Pym’s a genius on a number of different subjects, he’s second best at a lot of things. Though, to be fair to him, he’s the only one who’s ever developed a truly self aware AI from scratch. Of course, that didn’t work out so well for him…

Alonso

I like to read this scenario as Dr. Doom having the highest ‘raw’ intelligence but his pride having gotten in the way of fulfilling that talent. Mr. Fantastic , if a step below him in intelligence has made up for it in his optimistic continuous pursuit of knowledge and self-reflective intelligence.

Tuomas

While Richards and Pym and Doom and Banner may be highly intelligent, the way they’ve used that intelligence has backfired so many times it’d be hard to call them the “smartest”. Whereas with Hank McCoy, I can’t think of too many instances where his smarts would’ve betrayed him. So McCoy it is.

Pedro Bouça

Well, the reason McCoy went from a guy with oversized limbs to a furry weirdo was that his smarts bakfired on him…

Anyway, no one is smarter than Doom! Although his intelligence is dragged down by his oversized ego. Do note that, contrary to popular opinion, he HAS won many times, including ruling the world at least twice (once in the Supervillian Team-Up series, other on the Emperor Doom GN) and becoming the supreme power of the universe (on Secret Wars). He hasn’t kept it, of course, but except for the alien demigod Thanos I can’t recall any Marvel supervillian even half as sucessful.

Tuomas

Jer

I’m fairly certain that Pedro was referring to the first time Beast went from “guy with oversized limbs” to “blue ape” back in the 70s, not the (relatively) more recent switch. That first time when he was trying to cure his own mutation and it backfired on him.

Tuomas

Yeah, I noticed that, hence my second post. Anyway, there are many ways to define “smartness”, and I think the first five people on the list are mostly smart in the realms of hard sciences and engineering. However, being a science genius is hardly the only possible qualification for smartness. Hank McCoy feels more like a renaissance man, i.e. he’s knowledgeable in many different fields, not just science, plus he seems to possess more emotional intelligence than the others on the list.

Richards, curse him. I would’ve loved to vote for Doom but I … just … couldn’t. The Mad Thinker was also close. Hank McCoy’s smart but Pym is smarter. Stark is a genius, just ask him and he sure is cunning but he’s only the only one with substance-abuse issues on the list. (Pym mighta been on pills or a few tall-cans before he punched his wife but that was all in the gutters and should not be considered canon.) And Banner? Parker’s smarter than he is! Who gets caught in their own bomb test? Not a smart guy, that’s for sure. Parker invented web-shooters, not to mention web-fluid. On a half-completed high school education.

Thok

Among these choices, Reed. He basically matches everybody else in their specialties and beats them outside their specialties. (OK, Doom is actually better than Richards in temporal mechanics and magic, but not so much so to make up for Richards’ advantages almost everywhwere else.)

But Beast is the only one of these characters with anything resembling a high Wisdom score.

Brian Mac

To me, it’s not even open for discussion. Reed is the smartest one there is, just as the Hulk is the strongest one there is. It’s one of the foundations that the Marvel Universe is built on. There may be individual situations in which Reed behaves foolishly (about half of his interactions with Sue, for example, or any time magic is involved), but bottom line: Reed’s smartest.

Scott

I voted Reed, but I think T’Challa should be on the list, as well. In a recent issue of Incredible Hulk, Reed, Cho, Pym, T’Challa, and McCoy all met up to talk about Bruce, with the implication being that they and Stark were the seven smartest people on Earth (presumably villians don’t have IQ scores available for public examination).

Julian

Joe

I went for the obvious, Reed, since I figure you’re equating smartest with highest IQ. Thought like someone mentioned above me, I think if you were to use the term “wise” or “crafty” or something along those lines then I don’t think Reed would be the sure fire winner.

Tony Stark is clearly very smart, but he is basically a mechanical engineer with an aptitude for business. There are literally dozens of those people currently running around the real world. None of them enter into the “smartest person in the world” conversation.

Doctor Doom is a terrorist with a flair science running a rogue state. Also, not the type of guy that enters the “smartest person” conversation outside comic book world.

The Mad Thinker? Please. That dude isn’t smart enough to get himself a decent name.

Whatever else he dabbles in, Reed Richards specialty is Aerospace Engineering (or rocket science). The Fantasticar is a pretty impressive feat in that regard. However, if he had been able to properly calculate the proper amount of shielding to protect his family from cosmic rays, then there would be no Fantastic Four. A massive failure in his own specialty rules out Reed.

Hank McCoy is pretty clearly some kind of Bio-Chemist. Despite his best efforts, he has never been effective at reversing undesired mutations in the Marvel U. That pretty well rules him out.

Hank Pym is some sort of physicist, who devised a way around the Conservation of Mass. Pretty impressive. However, he is a wife-beater and is pretty ineffectual outside the lab.

That leaves Bruce Banner. Dr. Banner is a Nuclear Physicist. The Gamma Bomb works like a clock. Banner is smart enough to operate in the world without any support system. Finally, he has shown a capacity for personal growth. All that makes him the Smartest Person in the Marvel U.

Sijo

Reed may be the most knowledgeable, but not in the sense of “wise”- he sure has screwed up lots of times, starting with the whole “steal a starship and take my family along” idea.

On the other hand, in terms of creativity, Richards probably IS the smartest; there was an arc in Fantastic Four where a villain stole his creativity rather than his genius, leaving Reed unable to come up with new ideas.

As for cunning, Thanos has proven that he outsmarts everybody else in Marvel, except Adam Warlock.

On a related matter, Mr. Terrific claims to be the Third Smartest Man in the DC Universe. Who are the other two? Luthor and Batman?

Jeremy

Iron Maiden

To quote Dean: That leaves Bruce Banner. Dr. Banner is a Nuclear Physicist. The Gamma Bomb works like a clock. Banner is smart enough to operate in the world without any support system. Finally, he has shown a capacity for personal growth. All that makes him the Smartest Person in the Marvel U.

That for the most part could never cure himself of becoming a rampaging menace with the mind of a 5 year old. Nope, I’d say that knocks him down a few pegs below Reed. Plus you admit his field of expertise is limited. Time machines laying around anywhere? Portal to Negative Zone? Doom is careful enough not to make a AI that’s going to come back and bite him in the keister. Although he once built a Bucky Barnes in response to a challenge by MODOK. Doom embedded with enough of Bucky’s essence that it c ountered its programming and sacrificed itself to save Cap.

I’d have to agree with something Byrne has said Doom is really the smartest but Reed’s got him beat. Doom is literally that guy who walks the very fine line between genius and insanity and sometimes stumbles over. Reed doesn’t, although he was severely depressed when he came back from Hyperstorm’s exile in the past. Or the example of the Brute, who is embittered over his loss of Sue in his reality

GarBut

You can use this vote to determine 1-6 and 8, actually. All official-like.

BUT

Brian, Brian — if only you hadn’t teased us with ROM like that. Here I was, thinking he was on the smartest-guy list, or at least on the list on the backup Avengers list, and instead it’s you giving a shout out to the Mad Thinker…

I thought the MadThinker’s ability to project his thoughts was born as a result of his super intelligence, unlike, say, Jean Grey whose psychic powers come from the mutant gene. So if his psychic abilities are simply a function of his high IQ, it stands to reason that he’s smarter than Reed Richards and Dr. Doom, since neither of them are capable of telepathy (without machines anyway, and as far as I know).

Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy!

The Mad Thinker’s thought projection is a function of a cyber-implant he put in his head, as explained almost every time he uses it. Moreover, the Thinker has repeatedly been stated to lack any ability for innovation; this is why his primary motivation in early appearances was to steal Reed’s inventions and notes.

If you reread FF #15, it’s explicitly stated there that the Awesome Android was created only after he got Reed’s notes on the unstable molecules that make the Android’s powers work. Nor was the Awesome Android sentient until years after.

The Thinker doesn’t belong on this list; he’s capable of using other’s information, but his abilities are rigidly defined as an inability to create new ideas of his own. The name is meant to be ironic.

Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy!

I suspect that the confusion here is with Ultimate Mad Thinker, who really is a rival to Ultimate Reed’s intellect. Of course, she’s also a teenaged girl who surgically added her retarded brother’s brain tissue to her own, so I don’t quite get why people read elements of that character back into the very different mainstream version.

I admit that my knowledge of the Thinker stems entirely from an issue of Marvel Adventures and a Roger Stern ASM I fuzzily recall from a few years back. I was unaware of the cyber-implant, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, considering he uses it from prison in the Stern issue. You would figure they would search/scan him extra carefully before locking him up, given his status as a super criminal. You’re giving me too much credit when you suggest I reread FF #15, as I’ve not read it even one time, much less several.

Todd Lawrence

I’m going with Pym, if just because we’ve actually seen more of his “accomplishments” (even if most of them have blown up in his face). He’s a renaissance man style scientist like Reed but isn’t nearly as well respected, which makes him hungrier to “prove himself”. To me, that (and a hint of mental instability brought on by the death of both of his wives, not to mention long hours in the lab and just the smallest hint of an inferiority complex) makes him an interesting character. He’s basically a noble scientist who is prone to making chaotic errors in judgment out of a desire to prove that he deserves to be wherever he is. He lacks Richards’s superhumanly confident sense of altruistic nobility, but aspires to someday have it (unlike Doom, who would rather tear Richards down than build himself up as his own man).

When it comes to sheer brilliance over a variety of fields, Hank’s the one to beat. Reed’s a brilliant “idea man”. Hank’s strength (and weakness) is in making his ideas happen.

Stern paid this bit off many, many years later in Spider-Man Team-Up #2, which starts out as a sequel to the story in ASM #242, but promptly goes off the rails as the Thinker’s abandoned creation Quasimodo turns up and destroys the robot into which the Thinker is projecting his mind, causing painful psychic feedback that leaves the Thinker drooling in his own cell.

The Thinker suffers this fate yet again when Helmut Zemo (as Citizen V) decapitates another of his thought-projected robot doubles in Thunderbolts #2, remarking that the Thinker is probably in jail already as it stands.

chad

this one was a hard call for all the names are smart and worthy of the title in their own way but had to go with reed for when it comes to smarts one reed thinks and also is always planning ahead of time with gadgets or other things doom fits but his pride is his weakness. so had to pick reed

danjack

As well all know, there are many different types of intelligence [or smartness] so this poll is a bit unclear. If its Emotional Intelligence, i would give it to Hank McCoy [lots of friends, steady girl for a long time, positive outlook], if its Spiritual Intelligence i give it to Doom [remember that he has used magic and even was in Hell itself, as well as having the strongest sense of self]. If we are talking Innovative Intelligence then its Stark [multiple armors, multiple functions, on the fly innovations].
Also, ROM gets my vote for fashion intelligence [chromey-silvery space suit is always the best!]

Mary Warner

Reed is the obvious choice, with Doom being the next most obvious. But when going over this list in my mind I kept thinking of all the stupid things they’ve done over the years, especially Doom. I think most of this could be blamed on stupid writers. A lot of them really seem to have difficulty imagining how intelligent people actually think, as opposed to simply coming up with cool inventions. (Which is easy for writers, since they don’t have to figure out how such things could actually work.) In the end, I went with what seems the least popular choice, the Thinker, simply because he actually seems intelligent in all the stories I’ve read with him. Although I should admit I haven’t read all that many.
When Reed or Stark invent something cool, you know that they’ve spent days at least in the lab, working on it, probably failing several times and tinkering some more. The Thinker just sits in his cell and works through his plans in minute detail. Then he does them. There rarely seems to be any experimentation for the Thinker. Of course, this is probably why he fails so much of the time, but really, in raw brain-power, if not judgement, he seems to outshine the others.

Although, after reading the other comments, I wonder now if I should’ve gone with McCoy.

Whether Cho is really #7 is a whole other matter. As far as I’ve seen, we only have his insistence to go by. He could very well be wrong. I know I haven’t seen that much sign of super-intelligence from him, but I’ve only read about him in Mighty Avengers. I never even heard of him before he started appearing there.

Bernard the Poet

Doom invented a time machine before Reed, his Doombots are superior to any robot Reed has ever built, he has an extensive knowledge of magic, unlike Reed and has built an arsenal unmatched by Reed Richards. The standard of living of the average Latverian has risen under his reign, while he has simultaneously financed a large robot army and sundry missile installations – so he must be an economics genius. He has committed numerous atrocities on American soil, but Latveria has never suffered any retailiation – so he must be a master of diplomacy.

He was born in a caravan in the middle of nowhere -and without the benefit of any superpower – has dragged himself to the very top of the Marvel Universe. He has ruled the world twice, controlled the power cosmic and defeated the Beyonder – lets face it, this isn’t really a contest.

Okay, Doom should lose some points for all the “bow”, “kneel”, “yield” stuff and talking about himself in the third person, but he’s still ten times smarter than Reed Richards. Reed stole a spaceship and took his girlfriend and her teenage brother through a cosmic storm, he saved Galactus’s life, he built a concentration camp for Tony Stark and still hasn’t cured the Thing. Reed is just rubbish.

Michael

Tuomas, you forget that Beast developed the prototype for MGH in Amazing Adventures #11…..the same issue he ingests it to then find himself covered in fur….so you cant say Beasts intelligence never backfires on him.

As far a Henry Pym goes……. I believe he is highly undercredited both in the Marvel U. and as a comic book character…hes done both good and bad with his genius….while he did make ultron dont forget he also made pym particles…..but i would not rank him as the smartest….but this could only be perhaps due to his feeling of inferiority and anger issues….hes got some barriers that would put him up there if he were to break them.

The Doom/Reed case has always been interesting to me because truly its a question that cant really be solved…Reed is an obvious choice….but think about it…..

Iron Maiden

Bernard brings out a very good point. Of this group, Doom had the biggest disadvantage. He was born dirt poor …. he doesn’t even have shoes in the early scenes of childhood in Books of Doom. He had no mentor/father like Reed did with Nathaniel, who was a millionaire with a background in the sciences. It’s like he had to start 19 yards behind the starting blocks. The weird thing about the Richards family that unlike Stark, we know their forturne came from munitions…probably like the American version of the Krupp family in Germany. I can’t for the life of me remember how Nathanie Richards made his fortune, large enough that Reed had a trust fund of millions IIRC.

Iron Maiden

Les Fontenelle

Reed Richards without a doubt; Reed invented among other things unstable molecules, a portal to the negative zone and the fantasticar. And he always outsmarts Doom.

Doom created the Doombots, which make Pym’s unpredictable AIs pale in comparison. Doom created the world’s first fully-functional time machine, which even Reed hasn’t done. Doom stole Galactus’ power. Doom also mastered sorcery and an alien mind-transfer method independent from technology. His list of achievements could go on and on, really; and the only reason for Doom being second best is because Reed always beats him.

The rest are the rest, and the matter of who’s Third Best would actually be a more interesting question. I’d go with Tony Stark on 3rd and the Mad Thinker at 4th.

tyler

tyler

by which I mean that he’s been shown to outwit just about everyone, and I think he has as much of a claim to the number one status as any of the others. The “7th smartest person” shtick is really just a polite way of not offending others by diminishing their favorites.

Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy!

I’d say there’s another good case for Doom’s being number two on the list — he’s still committed to irrational goals and pathologically incapable of real self-reflection. To me, at least, the fact that he wants to conquer the world is itself evidence of the limits of his understanding of that world and the people in it.

Doom’s intelligence is great for manipulating things outside himself, but he has no capacity to apply it to his own internality. Reed, for all his dickishness and tendency towards emotional withdrawal, is still capable of trying something new and of forming understanding bonds with others. He’s usually capable of what Doom isn’t: guilt (over Ben, for example) and self-consideration. Even the visual symbolism contrasting Doom and Mister Fantastic bespeaks this — a man of unyielding iron, a man in a shell who refuses to look at his own face; and a man who is essentially fluid and extensible, infinitely self-alterable and adaptable.

Andrew Collins

Reed seemed the obvious choice at first, but then as I thought about it, I went with Tony. He’s the only one who has used his genius to not only overcome an immediate problem, but to try to benefit others in some fashion. His intelligence helped him fashion not only a truly ‘makeshift’ pacemaker, but it’s kept him alive, provided him a vast fortune based on sales and trademarks, and when his technology got into the wrong hands, he went out and reclaimed as much as he could. I know I’m oversimplifying, and yes, I’m purposefully omitting his drinking problems, but I have always been impressed with Tony’s characters (except for his Civil War-era Iron Douchebag personality…)

The others?
– Reed still can’t find a cure for Ben. Plus annoying Flying Car keeps setting off all kind of Homeland Security terror alerts over NYC…
– Doom wastes his genius on metal suits and revenge schemes…
– Pym keeps making robots that only want to kill him…
– Hank McCoy also can’t seem to find a way to end his personal maladies
– Banner- ditto
– And Mad Thinker’s name kind of says it all, even if he did give us one of the greatest androids ever in “Awesome Andy.” (Thank you Mr. Slott)

David

Guys, I’m not sure you realize this, but Pym is the only human in the Marvel Universe to make an actual self-aware AI. Wait, sorry, forgot about Abel Stack, but he’s not exactly famous…
Hell, even Ultron has never succeeded at making an AI from scratch, and he is one! All of the robots he’s made had brain patterns of existing humans. While Reed, Tony, and Victor have all made AIs that would certainly pass the Turing Test, they’re not self-aware and only really do what their creators tell them to. They never really LEARN anything new. Ultron went from infantile to super-human intelligence in a matter of minutes, and figured out how to make himself basically immortal.
Add to that that Pym is a master of a bunch of wildly different fields, and you gotta wonder….
Now that I’ve talked it through, I kinda want to change my vote (I voted for Reed).

Omar Karindu, with the power of SUPER-hypocrisy!

Actually, David, every person on the list except Hank McCoy and Bruce Banner have created self-aware AI.

— Reed created HERBIE and Roberta; HERBIE was sufficiently sentient to sacrifice itself to stop a villain, Doctor Sun.

— Doom created the Doomsman, aka Andro, which was meant to be a sentient Doombot. Unfortunately, it rebelled against him and tried to lead his robots to kill him.

— Tony created LMDs, including a Tony Stark LMD that became sentient and tried to replace the original article. In the 1990s, he created the sentient computers PLATO and VIRGIL. More recently, he’s been using the JARVIS model AI, which is not the human Edwin KJarvis. (It was created when Tony thought the real Jarvis was dead.)

— The Mad Thinker created his so-called “Intellectual Robots,” sentient androids based on the great thinkers of history; additionally, he recently granted the Awesome Android sentience as part of an elaborate scheme.

You';ll notice that Reed, Stark, and the Thinker even managed to do this on purpose and without some of their creations trying to kill them, something Hank never quite got the hang of.

You also forgot the original sentient AI in the Marvel Universe, the Golden Age HUman Torch, created by Professor Phineas Horton. There’s also the Mark II Sentinels created by Larry Trask in that mix. All Marvel Universe AI descends from 30th century technology “seeded” in the 20th century by Kang, in any case, so it’s one of the less impressive feats around.

Iron Maiden

Omar, while I agree with your well thought out assessment of Doom’s limitations and Reed’s abilities, in this group Doom is the only one that wholly embraces the study of magic in the Marvel Universe. None of the others comes close. Reed was portrayed a bit more inflexible than he should be in Waid’s “Unthinkable”…after all, they did have that neighbor that gave Reed and Sue up to Mephisto… it is still the one thing he didn’t pick up a book and understand in the proverbial instant.

I wouldn’t hang my hat on Pym’s creation of Ultron either as something to brag about since it is a creation that has run amok. The others probably shake their heads at that.

ykw

Of the list, Richards obviously stands out in terms of polymath-intelligence. He may well be out-brained by someone else in specialized knowledge (though I still ain’t buying him as more knowledgeable on Pym particles than Pym himself), but nobody has his breadth of learnin’ (though T’Challa can’t be very far off).

However, even Reed is aware that his “daughter” Valeria is already several steps ahead of him. She may have chosen to hide her intellect in order to have something closer to a normal childhood than she might otherwise live out, but that won’t last forever.

nikki

Half of these guys began with experiments that went wrong! That said those are the one who usually aim highest. They all have different specialities but I’ll go with Reed. Space travel seems harder than genetic manipulation gone awry and engineering a suit of armour. As for Hank, well I’ve never seen any of his work make a differance

LouReedRichards

The others all have their strengths, but I don’t see the breadth of knowledge and skill that Reed or Doom have shown in many, many different areas. Although in a way I almost wish it could be Hank McCoy, there’s just something instantly likeable about his character. But he’s a almost a simpleton compared to Reed or Doom.

Maybe Hank would win “Who’s the nicest guy in the Marvel Universe”

BTW: Reed figured out long ago that he couldn’t “cure” Ben of being the Thing because Ben secretly didn’t want to be cured. So it’s not really his fault.